San Francisco – June 15, 2015 – Samba TV, the world’s leading provider of Smart TV applications, has completed its acquisition of Warsaw-based startup Filmaster. Backed by German VC HackFwd, and HardGamma Ventures, Filmaster is a software company specializing in recommendation engines built on its own proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. Samba TV has already begun deploying Filmaster technology in its products and the acquisition now represents the company’s largest presence in the European market.

Anyone who has surfed through hundreds of channels offered by a cable TV provider has no doubt been frustrated by the experience of scrolling for some time and not finding something good to watch. Filmaster’s recommendation engine will be used within Samba TV applications on Smart TVs enabling viewers to quickly find content a viewer is likely to enjoy based on past viewing behavior. This acquisition follows Samba TV’s launch of Samba TV Analytics enabling a Smart TV viewer to quickly determine what content is trending with real-time analytics. Samba TV’s platform is monetized by brand sponsorship and the company also aims to use Filmaster’s machine-learning and predictive analytics technology to improve the relevance of advertising across any screen used while watching TV.

Warsaw joins San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Tokyo, Taipei among the operational hubs for Samba TV. Warsaw will be Samba TV’s primary product development group for products focused on the European market.

Ashwin Navin, Co-Founder and CEO of Samba TV said, “The Filmaster team have shown amazing results in making media more relevant in every deployment of their technology. We are excited to combine their expertise in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with ours to make content and advertising more engaging to our users.”

Borys Musielak, CEO and Founder of Filmmaster added, “When I heard Ashwin present at Bitspiration Festival in Poland, I knew right away that we shared the same vision. Exactly one year later, we’re excited to join Samba TV, participate in its rapid growth and contribute to its launch in Europe.”

The acquisition is closed as of the date of this announcement, and terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

About Samba TV
Samba TV delivers a more engaging TV experience through its portfolio of applications and platform technologies. Its content identification technology extracts viewership insights from social media, set-top boxes and connected devices. Founded in 2008, the Samba TV platform seamlessly connects Smart TVs, laptops, tablets and mobile phones to instantly deliver contextually relevant information to across screens. Samba TV’s software and applications are currently available on over 36 million screens in 118 countries. For more information, please visit http://samba.tv or follow @samba_tv on Twitter.

About Filmaster
Filmaster provides personalization and analytics solutions for the entertainment industry helping media companies rapidly capture and analyze user preferences in order to deliver a comprehensive profile of the audience and drive incremental viewership.